Royal Mail’s claims that nine out of 10 letters are delivered the next day
have been thrown into doubt after an investigation caught staff “systematically”
trying to fix figures.
The travel plans of at least half a million people are in disarray after
British Airways cabin crew announced seven days of strikes.
More than 10,000 workers who say they suffered health problems from the toxic
conditions at Ground Zero after the September 11 terror attacks have won
compensation of $657.5 million (£432 million) in a deal ending years of
legal fighting.
President Barack Obama yesterday delayed a trip to Asia amid falling approval
ratings and grave doubts that his 11th hour attempt to push health care
reform through Congress will succeed.
Baroness Uddin, the Labour peer, has been cleared of any wrongdoing over her
expenses claims.
One of the sisters raped by her father over three decades said she had been
”too scared” to tell anyone about her ordeal.
Charities say reports of abuse being routinely ignored is a ’systemic and increasing problem’
Torture survivors seeking sanctuary in Britain are being wrongly held in government detention centres, despite independent medical evidence supporting claims of brutal violence against them in their home countries.
According to Home Office guidelines, in cases where there is evidence that a person seeking asylum has been tortured they should be detained only in “exceptional circumstances”. But medical charities that carry out hundreds of independent assessments of torture survivors every year have accused the government of routinely ignoring their reports, with victims held in detention centres until their asylum claims are heard – and, in almost every case, rejected.
Sonya Sceats, a spokeswoman for one charity that carries out medical assessments for the government, told the Observer: “It’s very clear there is a systemic and increasing problem here. The corollary of their dismissal of independent medical evidence is that the protection [asylum] claim is invariably rejected and this means a survivor of torture is at risk of being returned to further torture or at risk of detention.”
The allegations come in the wake of strong criticism last week of the UK Border Agency, which was condemned for failing to investigate claims of mistreatment by failed asylum seekers in abuse allegations up to July 2008. Ministers now plan to review the use of force against asylum seekers by British security guards after a Border Agency report on abuse conceded that serious injuries were suffered by detainees who had been handcuffed or physically restrained.
The new allegations further highlight systematic mistreatment in Britain’s asylum system. One 43-year-old torture victim from Zimbabwe, who is on hunger strike in Yarl’s Wood detention centre, Bedfordshire, alleged she was detained despite independent verification of the abuse in her home country.
Her arms are scarred from repeated stabbings during an incident in Zimbabwe in which she was also beaten and raped. The woman, who wishes to remain anonymous, has been in Yarl’s Wood for five months and alleges medical mistreatment and racist abuse by staff, claims that have been denied. She told the Observer: “The officers are racist and are not sympathetic. We have suffered and don’t want to be tortured here, but inside here it is a form of torture but nobody can see us locked up.”
Bibiche Lutete, 36, was beaten and repeatedly raped in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where the UN has confirmed rape is used as a weapon of war. After seeking asylum in the UK, she said she had been further traumatised while being illegally held in a British detention centre. She also claimed to have suffered “medical abuse” and had anxiety attacks after witnessing a naked woman dragged from her room in Yarl’s Wood by private security guards, claims robustly denied by the Home Office.
“Everybody was shocked,” she said. “She had no clothes on and she was photographed. I still get flashbacks.”
The Medical Foundation For the Care of Victims of Torture, the UK charity dedicated to the treatment of torture survivors, said it had lodged complaints with the Home Office over concerns that its assessments documenting evidence of abuse among asylum seekers were being increasingly dismissed by officials. The foundation cited figures from the last 18 months showing only seven people had been released from detention out of 250 cases where clinical evidence of abuse had been presented.
The Border Agency denied it dismissed the evidence of independent medical experts. Hugh Ind, the agency’s director for protection, said: “We consider all evidence submitted in support of asylum claims very carefully, including claims of torture. Where an individual sets out a credible case that they are in need of protection, we normally grant asylum.”
An Observer investigation has also found that the number of “assaults” against refugees in detention centres remains high. The charity Medical Justice Network has documented at least 15 recent cases where a detainee claims they were assaulted, while allegations by asylum seekers of inadequate healthcare are running at eight a month.
A number involve torture survivors, including one from the DRC who ended up in hospital last March after sustaining severe handcuff injuries during an attempted deportation from the UK by private security guards. His complaint to the Border Agency tells how six guards restrained him on a plane and that “one turned round trying to strangle me by my throat while the other was banging my head on the seat in front”.
The government is trying to clear a backlog of 200,000 asylum cases, though the border agency admits it can process fewer than half its target applications a month. Three Russians refugees leapt to their death from the 15th floor of a block of flats in Glasgow last Sunday, prompting further concern over the treatment of asylum seekers. Yesterday hundreds of people joined a rally in the city and called for an end to the “enforced removal of refugee families”.
Nick Clegg describes George Osborne’s plans to slash budgets as ‘economic masochism’
The Liberal Democrats have distanced themselves from the Conservatives by warning they would not support plans to cut public spending too early in the next parliament.
The party’s leader, Nick Clegg, said early deep cuts would be “economic masochism”. It came as the Lib Dem treasury spokesman, Vince Cable, hit out at the Tories’ economic plans. In his speech at the party’s spring conference in Birmingham, Cable accused the Conservatives of engaging in a “phoney war over cuts” that would affect millions of lives. He also hit out at George Osborne, the shadow chancellor.
Cable said the Tories were trying to present their economic team as “‘Slasher’ Osborne and the Hard Men”. But, he added, they appeared to have taken cuts straight after the election off the table – at least for now. “Or at least that’s what I think they said. I’d love to attempt a critique of the Tories’ budget plans, but I have no idea what they are. I think the present line on the budget is: ‘Trust us and we’ll tell you after the election’,” he told cheering delegates.
He added: “People are desperate to see the back of this Labour government. But they don’t want the same old Tories. And make no mistake they are exactly the same.”
He also claimed that David Cameron’s party and its “cronies” were trying to create financial panic to frighten people into voting for them. “Playing fast and loose with the financial stability of this country for political gain – destabilising the markets – is dangerous, irresponsible and wrong,” said Cable.
He did not limit his criticism to the Conservatives. Cable, having famously compared Gordon Brown to Mr Bean, this time made delegates laugh when he said the prime minister sounded like the Chelsea footballer Ashley Cole, pleading: “Give me another chance.”
The Lib Dems had identified £15bn worth of reductions in public spending that would cut the deficit, he said. The party has come under an increasing level of scrutiny as the polls narrow. Observers are watching for any signs to suggest whether the Lib Dems would be prepared to make a pact with Labour or the Conservatives in the event of a hung parliament. That is the scenario suggested by two polls released today.
YouGov research for the Sunday Times finds that the Tories’ lead has narrowed from five points to four over the past week. An ICM poll for the Sunday Telegraph places Cameron’s party seven points ahead – not enough for a majority. The same research suggests that the Lib Dems have strengthened their position and are now on 21 points.
Clegg will discuss a hung parliament when he addresses MPs today. “People often ask me what the Liberal Democrats will do after the general election. Some days I read we’re planning a deal with Labour, some days that we’re planning a deal with the Conservatives, other days that we’ll refuse to talk to anyone at all,” he is reported as planning to say.
Benedict XVI’s spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi, suggests ‘tenacious’ plot to implicate pontiff in cover-up
The pope’s spokesman has launched a vigorous counter-attack against a report linking Benedict XVI to a sex abuse cover-up while he was archbishop of Munich from 1977 to 1981.
Father Federico Lombardi appeared to suggest in an interview on Vatican Radio that the pope, who also has strong links to the city of Regensburg, was the victim of a plot.
“It’s rather clear that in recent days there have been people who have searched – with notable tenacity – in Regensburg and Munich for elements to personally involve the holy father in the question of the abuses,” Lombardi said. “To any objective observer it’s clear that these attempts have failed.”
The Vatican has been appalled in recent days by a flood of allegations of priestly sex abuse in Germany, Holland, Austria and even Italy.
Today, the pope’s former diocese rushed out a statement to pre-empt a story in tomorrow’s edition of the Munich-based daily Süddeutsche Zeitung. It said that when Joseph Ratzinger was the city’s archbishop he had agreed that a priest from another diocese should undergo therapy at a rectory. The records suggested that “it was known then that this therapy should probably be carried out due to sexual relations with children”. But instead of sending him for therapy, the statement said, the diocese’s then vicar-general, Gerhard Gruber, assigned him to a parish where at least one child was subsequently abused.
“Gruber takes full responsibility for the wrong decisions,” the diocese said.
The church’s attempt to bury the affair was immediately challenged by the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, which tomorrow is holding “sidewalk vigils” in more than 30 US cities in support of European victims. David Clohessy, the network’s national director, said: “As a high-ranking church official for decades, if Ratzinger knew of one reassigned paedophile priest, the odds are he knows of others, possibly dozens. German secular authorities should do in Munich what Irish secular authorities did in Dublin: launch a thorough secular probe of clergy sex crimes and cover-ups.”
The latest front was opened in Austria where two newspapers reported cases of abuse among choirboys in Fügen and Vienna. Today a newspaper in the predominantly German-speaking Italian province of Bolzano-Bozen recounted the story of a then 15-year-old boy who said that in the 1960s he was coerced into providing sexual services to local friars.
The growing scandal has also put Catholic leaders under siege elsewhere in Europe. Bishops in the Netherlands are looking into more than 200 suspected cases, and in Germany at least 170 former pupils at Catholic schools have made accusations. Another case concerns an all-boys choir in Regensburg, the Domspatzen, once conducted by the pope’s brother, Georg Ratzinger. The reported sex abuse dates from before his 30-year tenure as director.
The scandals have set off an unprecedented public debate among church leaders on one of Roman Catholicism’s strongest taboos – whether the paedophilia in its ranks is a consequence of priestly celibacy. On Friday, Benedict himself vigorously defended an unmarried priesthood, telling an audience of priests that it was not something to be given up for “passing cultural fashions”. But one of his own prelates, Hans-Jochen Jaschke, said in a radio interview: “The celibate lifestyle can attract people who have an abnormal sexuality and cannot integrate sexuality into their lives.”
Priestly celibacy is a discipline, rather than a doctrine, and most of the Eastern rites of the Catholic church follow the practice of the Orthodox in allowing for married priests; the pope could do away with celibacy at any time. The Italian daily La Repubblica reported that a Vatican working group had been set up secretly to consider reform, but said no change was likely for at least 50 years.
The Vatican’s own newspaper, meanwhile, added to the debate. In an article in L’Osservatore Romano, Catholic academic Lucetta Scaraffia linked the scandals to the lack of women in pastoral and decision-making roles in the church. She said a more significant female presence “could have ripped away the veil of male omertà” that had covered up abuse.
On Friday, the head of the German bishops’ conference, Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, briefed the pope on measures being taken by his archdiocese to deal with clerical sex abuse. But, as a German lay group noted, the pope did not take the opportunity to express sympathy with victims, and doubts remained as to how many of his pastors understand the gravity of the situation. The day before, one of the bishops closest to Benedict, Gerhard Müller, declared that the scandal was over “cases from 40, 50 years ago” that had been blown out of proportion by “a big media clamour”.
He lashed out at Germany’s justice minister, Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, who had talked of a Catholic wall of secrecy. Müller said she belonged to a humanist association which he claimed was a kind of “masonry” that “considers paedophilia normal and wants to decriminalise it”. Müller, who founded the institute that is publishing Benedict’s complete works, is also the prelate charged with probing abuses in the Domspatzen choir.
Rights groups express concern at the rising number of juveniles as young as 12 who are held behind bars and ‘treated like terrorists’
With more than 300 Palestinian children being held in Israeli prisons, human rights groups and Palestinian officials are increasingly concerned about the actions of the Israeli military.
The Israeli group B’Tselem said that security forces had “severely violated” the rights of a number of children, aged between 12 and 15, who had been taken into custody in recent months.
The family of one 13-year-old boy from Hebron who was arrested on 27 February by a military patrol and detained for eight days have brought a legal case against the authorities. The teenager, Al-Hasan Muhtaseb, described how he had been interrogated without a lawyer late into the night, forced to confess to throwing stones, made to sign a confession in Hebrew that he couldn’t read, jailed with adults and brought before a military court. He was only released on bail eight days later, after considerable legal effort by several human rights groups. As he had signed a confession, he still faces a possible indictment for throwing stones – a charge that usually brings several months in jail but carries a maximum penalty of 20 years’ jail.
Although most international attention focuses on diplomatic sparring in the Middle East, it is cases such as this teenager’s arrest that are the reality for Palestinians living under Israeli military occupation. The surprise about the teenager’s experience is not that it is exceptional, but that it is a common occurrence.
As of the end of February, 343 Palestinian children were being held in Israeli prisons, according to Defence for Children International (DCI), which took up the Muhtaseb case. Israel routinely prosecutes Palestinian children as young as 12 and the Israeli legal system treats Palestinians as adults when they turn 16, but Israelis become adults only at 18. Ill-treatment and torture of Palestinian children are “widespread, systematic and institutionalised”, DCI said in a report last year.
Al-Hasan Muhtaseb was arrested early in the afternoon as he and his 10-year-old brother Amir were walking home through Hebron, in the occupied West Bank, after visiting their aunt.
“Two soldiers came to us and told us: ‘Come over here.’ We went to them,” said Al-Hasan, a slight boy, neatly dressed, who barely looks his 13 years. “They took my brother and I don’t know where they took him. I was sent inside the station and I never saw him after that.”
They were detained separately. Amir was released later that night, deeply traumatised. “He was in a very, very bad psychological state,” said his father, Fadel Muhtaseb, 45. “He had wet himself. He was terrified.” The boy said he had been held with his eyes covered by a hat in a room where there was also a dog, which he could hear panting.
Al-Hasan was interrogated at an Israeli military post in Kiryat Arba, a Jewish settlement in Hebron. “I was asked: ‘Did you throw stones? Did you hurt the soldiers or hit their vehicles? How close were you to the soldiers? Why were you throwing stones?’,” he said. Eventually he had admitted throwing stones, although in an interview last week Al-Hasan said it was untrue: on that day he had not thrown stones, although earlier in the week he had.
He had been made to sign a statement in Hebrew, a language he doesn’t speak or read. He was blindfolded and taken to Ofer military prison, where he arrived at 3.30am. “There were no other children,” he said. “I was afraid.” Three days after his arrest he appeared at a military court. But his father, who works as a tiler, could not afford the 2,000 shekels (£350) bail. “My father told them he couldn’t pay this much money,” said Al-Hasan. His father, who sat next to him through the interview, burst into tears.
Last Sunday the boy was freed under a bail arrangement in which his father faces arrest if his son does not appear at the next summons. “Even if he were throwing stones, he is only 13,” said Fadel. “They treated him like a terrorist. They claim they are democratic and human, but they are not.”
The Israeli Defence Force defended the arrest, saying Israeli troops were acting to prevent violence. Both boys are now incontinent and Amir has been hospitalised. “He wakes up in the middle of the night screaming,” said Fadel. “We try to comfort him, but he’s getting worse and worse.”
The Palestinian Authority highlighted the case of the two Muhtaseb brothers, saying Israel was breaching international law and has recently seemed to take a stronger stance against the more routine challenges of the occupation, including the effect of the West Bank barrier. Israeli security forces have warned of a broader crackdown if the protests escalate.
